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I’ve been staring at my laptop’s monitor for a few minutes now, randomly clicking onto the dozens of tabs I maintained open in my Firefox and refreshing the pages, especially at ShutterAsia’s Private Messages page where I’m eagerly anticipating a favourable reply from a seller who wants to let go his Canon 50mm f/1.8 II lens for only RM150 – an incredible deal, if you ask me.

And then I kept exhaling loudly that one can only interpret that as internalised sighs – my mind feels ruefully blank as I try to force-feed it information to retain as short-term memory before slowly disseminating it in writing for my Financial Accounting paper tomorrow morning. I feel a certain guilt for studying for the sake of studying, especially for this particular subject in which I have no love for, up to the point that – when Mr. Wong kindly released (or rather, exposed) all 8 questions that were coming up for tomorrow’s exam 2 weeks ago – I am blatantly memorising the steps on how to tackle all said 8 questions rather than trying to understand it.

And I’m sure that a few minutes after the paper is done and over with, I would’ve unconsciously blot out all that I’ve learned for the past 5 months. Kinda defeats the point of going to a tertiary institute to learn and pay all that money to obtain this overrated paper called the degree – I won’t be graduating honours or magna cum laude – when I’m forcing myself to survive college because this is the right thing to do.

You know, I’ve never considered myself as highly intelligent (I know I’ll get some flak for saying this but so be it) if compared to other certain individuals whom I have the highest regard for, because I know they’re street smart with an analytical mind.

When yesterday’s exam ended at 5pm (after reaching college at 8am) – a full day affair – there was this headache assaulting me and I was pondering whether I’ve actually stretched my brains’ limits to the max, after completing a Business Stats paper that require tedious amount of calculations. And I was wondering if this means I’m hopeless in doing mathematical equations and whether future tougher maths papers would turn me into a nerve wreck wtf. I was so very tired at the end of it all.

I’ll reveal this simple tip for scoring in exams if you’re ever in RMIT: just do the past year papers or even just look through them (which is what I’d done yesterday with my Marketing Principles paper, 10 minutes before we entered the exam hall, go figure). And shockingly enough 90% of the questions seemed to be repeated or tweaked slightly but the main essence remained the same.

How can I not score when this past year paper repetition is taking place? Take my Marketing MCQ section for instance: I sure as hell have no idea what ‘cash cows’ is but I was 100% certain that was the answer for a particular question ‘cause I just read the exact same question 10 minutes earlier.

Not that I’m complaining since I’ve already established a simple goal ever since I entered college: graduate in the easiest way possible. All that I’m ranting about is the futility of tertiary education (maybe it’s just here in Malaysia) – that I may be just ‘smart’ when it comes to written exams but when it comes to other practical things, I might fall short behind.

Are we all just so damn naturally kiasu to stay ahead of the competition here?

I know I’d be happier if I’ve taken up a photography course at an obscure college in USJ 9 business centre, but I suppose it’s this invisible rat race that I badly want to win to secure my future for that made me decide otherwise. A few comments made by my classmates (including Wai Jean, ah my crush <3) made me realise how true this is: that some of us are afraid to do our studies in Australia for our final year because we might not be able to handle the culture shock, of not being spoon-fed and not having tips being strewn around quite liberally as they’re done here.

I’ve been writing what just comes on my mind without self-censorship (well, maybe a little) and that felt quite good.

I’ve yet to even read my DSLR’s manual yet which was a tad bit sad. But I swear that once tomorrow’s paper is done with, I’ll spend a little more time with my new darling.. and hopefully snap a few good photos.

Edit: Just found out that the seller sold that RM150 lens already. T___T Sigh.